The origins of an aggressive Childhood Cancer discovered

The origins of a type of aggressive childhood lymphoma have been found, giving hope that new drugs could be designed to prevent the disease coming back after treatment.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge studied the progression of anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) in mice for the first time. ALCL is an aggressive blood cancer that typically appears as tumours in the lymph nodes, skin, lungs, liver and soft tissue and mostly affects children and young adults.
Current treatment for ALCL consists of intensive chemotherapy, which can have devastating long term side-effects including heart disease, infertility and secondary cancers. Up to 40% of children with ALCL relapse, requiring extra chemotherapy.
The origins of ALCL were traced to a gene fault in developing blood-producing stem cells found in the thymus. The scientists believe that while current drugs can kill cancer cells that spread into the rest of the body, they may not always be effective at killing these original 'cancer stem cells'. This allows them to sow the seeds for future relapse after apparently successful treatment has finished.
The research, which was funded by the blood cancer charity Bloodwise, is published online in the journal Nature Communications.